When a student who had never opened his mouth raised his hand toward the end of the class, my joy was complete. Sweaty and exhausted, like a cross-country skier flinging herself over the finish line, I called on him expectantly.
“Yes?”
He eyed me from under his ball cap and waited a moment. I could already hear the words in my head: O Ingrid! My Ingrid!
“I think we’ve had enough of a mindfuck for one day,” he finally said.
The room went quiet. Mindfuck? Did he really just say that?
I tried to swallow the lump that suddenly appeared in my throat, feverishly searching for something to say that was funny or would put him in his place. Something that would affirm my captaincy and ensure that at the end of the semester they would still climb up on their chairs.
But there was nothing.
“Fine,” I croaked. “Same time next week.”
No one made eye contact with me on the way out.
I told Bjørnar about it over dinner.
“What does mindfuck mean?” Jenny asked.
“It means messing around with someone’s head,” I informed her.
“Is that what you do at work?”
“No.”
“What do you really do at work?”
“Read books and write about them and teach other people about them.”
“Do flies live inside us?” Alva interrupted.
“No,” Bjørnar said. “They don’t.”
“Can I be excused?”
“Yes.”
I cleared the table and Bjørnar did the dishes.
“Mindfuck,” I complained. “Can you believe he said mindfuck? About Jacques Lacan! I am super good at explaining Lacan. I own Lacan! And Henry James. I own Henry James!”
There was that quivering feeling again. I wished I knew where the off button was.
But it didn’t seem like Bjørnar had heard any of what I had said. He was staring into the sink. I didn’t like it when he did that. It might mean he was worried. And if Bjørnar was worried, things were bad. In the realm of what really mattered.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked without really wanting to know the answer.
He didn’t respond.
The amplitude of the quivering increased, so much actually that my thighs started vibrating out of control. I held them still.
“Bjørnar,” I repeated. “What are you thinking about?”
He looked up, confused.
“Me? Nothing.” He paused for a bit. “Erik Thorstvedt.”
“The soccer goalie? Why are you thinking about him?”
“Dunno. He just popped into my head.”
“How worried are you that we haven’t sold the house yet?”
“Not very, but I’m certainly going to be.”
“People keep bugging me at work.”
“People always bug you at work.”
“But they’re bugging me more than usual. Plus, I think I have a urinary tract infection. Could you drop a urine sample off at the doctor’s office for me tomorrow?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. You’re driving Alva to preschool, right? And I have an early class. I’m quite sure it’s an infection, because I have a backache. Plus I think I might have a fever.”
He sighed.
“What about the heart attack?”
“It’s there all the time. I’ve learned to live with that.”
I was in the middle of a child-hair-washing operation when I heard Bjørnar’s voice from the kitchen.
“Hey, Ingrid, it says on the calendar in here that there’s a meeting for the PTA’s executive board. Did you remember that?”
“Oh, no! Is that today?”
I rinsed the shampoo off my hands and ran downstairs.
“When does it start?”
“Three minutes ago.”
“Argh!”
I yanked the bike keys off the shelf and pedaled down to the school without braking even once. Everyone looked up as I burst through the door.
“Sorry,” I said to no one in particular and flopped down into the closest chair. “Sorry, I was in the middle of putting the kids to bed, busy day, logistics and stuff.”
The PTA president, Martine, smiled disingenuously.
“Now we have a quorum,” she announced. “Everyone’s here except the principal, who’s sick. Assistant Principal Per Henrik is standing in for him.”
Per Henrik nodded, not very enthusiastically, and I tried to give him a look that was meant to show that I knew exactly how he felt.
“The first item of business,” Martine continued, “is our national holiday, the 17th of May. We have a representative here from last year’s 17th of May committee. She’s going to tell us a little about how the festivities were handled in the past and give us some suggestions for areas we can improve on this year.”
“It’s only November,” I objected.
“But it’s a children’s holiday and the PTA is responsible for the festivities,” Martine said.
“And to be clear,” the woman from last year’s committee said, “the 17th of May celebrations don’t just happen by themselves. Last year my whole family and my mother-in-law ended up manning the food station because no one would volunteer. We didn’t get home until ten p.m. Ten p.m.! Even my mother-in-law. Plus, all the sacks for the sack race fell apart after a half hour, and the prizes for the fishing game were all junk that the kids didn’t want. Some of them even threw their prizes at the grown-ups. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them are still out on disability from that. Not to mention that I’ve heard from reliable sources that the best prizes have already been snatched up.”
“Who snatched them up?” I asked.
“Other schools. Some of the PTAs are so organized that they started gathering prizes for this year’s 17th of May celebrations on May 18 last year. So, well, you can see for yourselves that we’re already playing catch-up.”
“Huh,” I said and leaned over my notepad, where a drawing of a hobbit was beginning to take shape.
An alternate I’d never seen before raised her hand.
“Yes?”
“I’m the alternate representative for the third grade and admittedly I’ve never attended one of these meetings before, but I have actually done a lot of work with ergonomics, occupational safety, and regulatory compliance in the community. And planning for the 17th of May is all well and good, but I think maybe it’s an even bigger problem that the children at this school are not receiving enough help tying their shoes.”
“Why don’t we discuss that when we get to the ‘other items of business’ line on the agenda?” Martine suggested. “Because I promised—”
“What I’d like to pin down is what type of measures the school is planning to implement,” the alternate interrupted, “and at the same time discuss whether the PTA board ought to have responded to the situation sooner.”
Everyone looked over at Assistant Principal Per Henrik.
“Well,” he said, “are you thinking about shoe tying in general?”
“Yes, actually I am. In general and in specific. My son, for example, does not get any help tying his shoes. And do you know what his teacher said? That we should buy him shoes with Velcro closures because the school doesn’t have the ‘capacity’ to tie the children’s shoes.”
“Yes, ahem,” said Martine. “I would’ve thought that maybe—”
“Ca-pa-ci-ty,” the alternate repeated, glaring at the assistant principal.
“Well, it is true,” Per Henrik explained, “that we encourage parents to teach children to tie their own shoes before they begin school. But Velcro is a good alternative if the child hasn’t mastered the skill.”
“What did you say?” the alternate asked.
“If the child hasn’t mastered the skill of tying his own shoes.”
“Are you suggesting that he can’t do it?”
“You just said that he can’t do it,” Martine said with a smile.
<
br /> “This is nothing to smile about!” the alternate yelled. “This is an admission of failure on the school’s part!”
A box of candies was slowly making its way around the table, but at the word failure it stopped. I closed my eyes and tried to brace myself for what was about to come.
And what was about to come was a comprehensive list of the pet peeves each individual PTA representative was harboring, everything from how much snow was permissible on the approach to the school before it needed to be shoveled or plowed to how unreasonable it was that the fourth grade was allowed to use the soccer field only once a week. There was so much to discuss that we probably could have kept going for hours and days if the alternate hadn’t finally blown her top and demanded that someone from the administration “take charge of the shoelace issue.”
“But all you need to do is teach him to—” began Per Henrik.
“I’m going to see to it that your refusal to accept responsibility for this situation is recorded in the minutes,” she growled, “and then I demand that someone contact the city!”
“I suppose that’s possible,” Martine said. “Off the top of my head I don’t recall who our liaison with the city is.”
The secretary started flipping back and forth through the minutes until she found the list.
“It’s . . . Winter? Ingrid Winter?” she reported as if asking a question.
“That’s me,” I said. “But I don’t recall being city liaison.”
“Great!” Martine exclaimed, relieved. “Then you’ll take the ball on this.”
“Uh, what ball?”
“The shoelace-tying issue. We’ll put that on the agenda for the next meeting.”
“Perhaps we can just include it under ‘other matters of business,’” Per Henrik suggested tentatively, “because we probably ought to avoid turning it into its own separate issue.”
The alternate snorted and crossed her arms defiantly.
“Hush it up, sure,” she said in a huff.
“No,” protested Per Henrik. “I’m not hushing anything up, but it’s important that—”
“What kind of person are you, anyway?” she interrupted. “And why are you even here to begin with?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is the whole school entitled to be represented at these meetings? I thought this was the parent-teacher executive committee. Not really something for the administration, you see? And you don’t even have any children at this school, do you?”
“No, I’m here in my capacity as—”
“Then I think maybe we ought to take a vote on whether or not we think it’s a good idea to have you sitting here telling us what to do, telling us that the well-being of our children somehow isn’t the responsibility of the PTA.”
“But I didn’t—”
“Can I see a show of hands? All those in favor?”
“I think maybe as president I should—” Martine began, but the alternate stopped her by raising her hand.
“I repeat: all those in favor of parents looking after their children’s interests, raise your hands now.”
Although many of the representatives took this opportunity to stare at the table, just barely a majority were still feeling the uneasiness from the use of the expression admission of failure, which ten seconds later resulted in the alternate watching in triumph as the assistant principal packed up his things and stepped out into the hallway.
“But you can’t go home,” Martine called out as he walked out, “because someone has to let us out the main door when we’re done.”
He nodded without saying anything.
“Great,” said the alternate. “Now we can relax a little.”
This led to the airing of frustrations with the quality of school lunches and how much homework the kids were getting. The alternate also took this opportunity to share her general observations on employment, local government, and the lack of follow-up from the on-site after-school day care program with regard to her own child. The planning for the 17th of May was postponed to the next meeting.
When we emerged into the hallway, Per Henrik was sitting on the floor typing something on his phone. He didn’t look up when we went by.
Biking home, I pedaled so hard I could taste blood in my mouth.
13
“You can’t expect me to deliver this to the doctor’s office,” Bjørnar said the next morning.
“But I don’t have anything else!”
“You want me to walk into the doctor’s office with a sample of my wife’s urine in a glass that says Taste the Fjords?”
“I sterilized it,” I said tiredly.
He shook his head and picked up Alva’s boots.
“Come on, honey, it’s time for us to go.”
“I’m so stressed out.”
“You’re stressed out? Is it tiring working in the ivory tower?”
“No, it’s all the other stuff.”
“You’re stressed, I’m stressed, everyone is stressed. Say bye-bye to Mommy.”
“Bye-bye, Mommy.”
“Bye-bye, sweetie!”
I stood by the window and watched them drive away. Five minutes later I pushed Ebba and Jenny out the door and watched them disappear down the street as well, before I headed off to work, planning to finish my conference paper. About Tehom. About Tehom as an all-inclusive chaos-cosmos.
Cosmic chaos.
Chaotic cosmicity.
Tehomic cosmic chaosism.
Silent Tehom that comes disguised as a gift, but annihilates everything.
I sat in the car thinking about how one of the signs of imminent doom was that the contrast between Monday morning and Friday afternoon had been erased. Friday afternoon used to be the best part of the week. That was when Bjørnar and I made pizza and split a beer while we played music and danced and enjoyed ourselves in the kitchen.
Not anymore.
It was as if all that good energy had been redirected somewhere else now. We were still there, all five of us, but now Bjørnar stood in the kitchen alone and made the food like an automaton. I scrubbed the bathroom floor and made the tiles shine, just as much an automaton. Even the children were completely silent, sitting there staring at the TV screen.
I knew why. Fridays no longer kicked off a weekend of freedom and cheerful leisure but rather chaotic cleaning drives and heavy frustration. Lately Saturdays had been spent having open houses, and on Sundays Bjørnar went to work with the same worn-out expression on his face that he’d had all fall. We weren’t human anymore, more like zombies, trapped in a world that was dominated and controlled by the Dictator of Housing Sales.
In this new reality, Monday morning was almost preferable. It was almost a relief to go to work and hear knocking on the door. It was a blessing to know there was another universe populated by humans who didn’t care about the downturn in the housing market and who didn’t hold conversations in which this premise lurked under everything.
“Yes,” I called.
“I found a solution,” Peter said with a wink, “the perfect solution, you might say.”
I was still wondering if he had intended to wink or if it was maybe a nervous tic when I realized he was waiting for me to respond.
“To . . . ?”
“I know how we’re going to reverse the planned course revision!”
He swept into my office and started waving around the folder he had tucked under his arm. It reminded me of the one we’d received from our real estate agent. I felt nauseated and opened my mouth to lie and tell him I had an appointment and couldn’t talk, but wasn’t able to get anything out before he flopped down on the chair and opened the folder. Inside there was a single sheet of paper with some scribbles on it.
“I have a friend in the private sector,” he said with satisfaction, “and he tipped me off to a negotiation strategy designed to outmaneuver the other party.”
“In the private sector?”
“Look,” he continued, “we’re meeting with t
he administration next week, right? We’re going to suggest a plan for how we envision the new course offerings and how these are going to fit into the new overall BA and MA programs, right?”
I nodded slowly.
“Well, my strategy is that we show up at the meeting without a plan. Wait, please don’t interrupt me. We have no plan, we say. They’re the ones who have to propose a plan. And when they do, we counter them with the following tactic. Because we actually do have a plan—namely for this revision never to take place. Do you have a red pen?”
I passed him a red pen and he motioned me closer.
“So, here’s what we do.”
I found myself looking at something that resembled the kind of play diagram a soccer coach might show the players before a big game. Under my name it said “bad cop.”
“Bad cop,” I read, and glanced up. “What’s that?”
Peter smiled.
“According to my sources, a bad cop behaves in an aggressive, antagonistic manner. In other words she opposes every argument put forward by the other party, and actively works to suss out their weaknesses.”
“I see?”
“Yeah, and then eventually brings the whole negotiation to a standstill, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
I looked down at the diagram again.
“And you have Frank listed as . . .”
“Frank is the good cop. That doesn’t really need any explanation, and actually we don’t even need to tell Frank about this at all. Good cop is his normal modus operandi, if you will, so that’s kind of the path of least resistance.”
“Ingvill, then. She’s the hard-liner?”
“Right. She’ll stall for time and make sure our team keeps its focus.”
“You think that’s a good role for Ingvill, do you?”
“It’s not ideal. I’ll concede that, but there wasn’t anyone else left after I put myself down as leader. So Ingvill will be the hard-liner. She really wants to do it and is going to practice. Did you know she has a personal trainer? He’s going to help her with the psychological preparations.”
The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter (The Ingrid Winter Misadventure Series) Page 7